Helen's New Caddy

I was up talking to our dear sister Ruth the other day and this story just came to mind.  It’s probably the reason I am not thin.  Ha-ha, could not be because of the whipping cream in my coffee or my treasured (DNA) or that I love hot sourdough bread with butter.  Not at all!! Anyway, this story feels like it happened a long time ago.

 I was around 34 years old and finally felt like my body was my own.  I had 4 little beautiful children in four years, divorced and look-in good (I just didn't know it).
After my 4^th baby, I was 31 years old and was fairly chunky, in size 19 pants. With my last 2 babies I had to go on bed rest for the last 6 months of the 9.  So every pregnancy I would gain quite a lot of weight. After my last little baby, Ruth bought me a pair of pants that when I held them up I was sure that they would not fit.  I told her that she was way off; they were so big they would fit a barn.  But when I put them on they fit to my despair.    Anyway, one day while I was at the ranch Dad told me that if I could get thin he would buy me a Cadillac, well that was all it took.  It took me about 3 years and I was down to my normal form, size 14 pants and feeling thin (Pearson style).   Ruth was now able to find me clothes that had some style to them.  But on my own, I found a dress that was from the ma and pa store.  It was a funny mixture of red, blue, with bits of yellow. The pattern was very small print so that the color ran all together, so of course it made me look thin.  The dress was straight and went almost to my ankles.  It kind of hung on me, but I thought that it was really nice and I wore it all the time.  I had been out visiting mother at the ranch for the summer and it was time to go back to Las Vegas and get the children into school.  Father said that I was look-in good and he had a caddy for me.  I was delighted.  I was just a bit worried what it would look like, but he did say brand new one (I was so believing).  So Off we went to Cedar City.  I did not have a vehicle at this time and was relying on my mother and father for transportation.  Father had the car at a friend’s house and it was a caddy for sure and brand spanking new to him for sure.  It looked ancient to me but I decided that father was making his promise good.  We went to the DMV and he sold it to me for $1 dollar.  It was so funny, but dad said that this way the insurance would be low(For sure).  He filled it up for me and off to Las Vegas I went.  The kids and I were so happy to have a car and my sweet little children trusted me to get them around safely.  Well, we got just passed St. George in the canyon when I felt a boom and the car started to shake and pull, I knew it was a blowout.  I was shaking as I pulled the car over on the side.  It was toward the end of the canyon where the curves are quite tight. Traffic was zooming by and I knew that I did not dare to get out so I put on my flashers and started to pray.  Thank goodness, God sent someone very nice and in a big rig truck.  The trucker pulled in behind me and helped me change the tire.  When he inspected the tire, he said that the spare was so bad that it would not get me to Las Vegas.  He said he followed me into Mesquite, Nevada where I told him thanks for all his help.  Needless to say, I had no money to my name and was stuck.  I pulled into a gas station and got out.  I took the children to the bathroom because after all that stress and time they all needed to go.  I held Robert and Roselie, while Savannah and Crystal held hands.  It was always an adventure.  Once we got back, I told the children to stay in and I went to find someone to talk to.  I walked back to my car and found the tire was flat.  I proceeded to tell the station manager my predicament. He looked at me with my 4 little children and shook his head.  I told him my home was in Las Vegas Nevada and I just needed to get back home.  I said that I could pay him once I got home, but that I needed help at this moment.  He looked at me in my funny ma and pa dress and knew that I was not lying.  He knew that I was in trouble and whether he ever got his money back or not, he needed to get me out of his shop (I may have looked like a polygamous lady in a Mormon town).   After a bit, he walked over and said that he had a fairly good tire that should get us back home and I didn't need to pay him back.  I thanked him from my heart and said that I would send him a check.  Thank goodness for these kinds of people.  He had the shop put the tire on and off I went.  I got back on the road and was cussing father and myself out because we hadn’t checked things out before I took my children for a ride.  I was just pissed that I trusted him with his new caddy idea.  It was getting dark by the time I pulled into Vegas and I had to find the lights and was just hopeful that all the lights worked.  I got all the way through Vegas and on Blue Diamond road when I heard the siren.  I was hoping that it would go around me so I went off to the side but sure as the night is dark it came up behind me with lights flashing.  The noise woke up the girls in the back and we were all scared.  I told my sweet children that it was going to be OK, but they started crying.  I told them that the cop was coming up to talk to me.   Thank goodness, I had her in a car seat.  The cop came up flashing his light into the car and looked at the children in the back and then up at me.  He said to roll down my window but I was shaking and scared.  He asked where my registration sticker was.  I told him that it must have fallen down in the back.  I asked him if I could go find it and he told me not to move.  He looked around and finally found it.  He said that the back light did not work and that my brake lights were out.  He made me open the trunk and he looked around in the car.  I think that he may have suspected drugs. He didn't realize that all he was going to find on me was green drink.   Ha-ha. Anyway once again I was cussing father out and the fact that I was so skinny that he needed to give me a Cadillac.  So much for a new caddy that sat in the driveway.
It was the kindness and the help of others that I was able to make it home that day.  I sent a check to that kind fellow from the Texaco gas station and thanked him for helping my little family.  It is amazing who you come into contact with in this life and the gratitude you feel from their goodness.  It is the love of God and the protection from my angles that saved the day.  Life is an adventure that never stops moving on. 

The Bunnies

The Bunnies

I can’t remember how, but somehow, we had a domestic bunny rabbit out to the ranch. If my memory is correct, it was a girl and we only had one. Then one of our deer hunting friends showed up with an award winning Male Bunny to give to us for free. He was a really pretty white bunny with pink eyes, just like the pictures on posters display. Lilly and I gladly adopted him into our bunny family.

For Lilly and I this was our first sex education class. We would put the male in with the female and watch him chase her around and around until he finally leaped onto her and did his thing. Sometimes they would make squealing sounds and when they were done, the male would flop over on his side almost like he was dead. We weren't sure if it was good sex or bad sex, but it was pretty entertaining to us farm girls.

Before long the female started making a nest and preparing for the birth of her babies. We watched her close so that we could see when they were born, but usually it happened at night, so we were just surprised in the morning to find babies had come. After doing this several times, we were soon the proud owners of a nice bunch of bunnies. We had to limit our entertainment and slow down the multiplication process. 

About that time, Mother got the idea to butcher a few and have fried rabbit. At first we thought she was surely joking, but quickly realized she wasn't. She had one of the boys or Father show us how to break their necks, skin and gut them and sure enough she cooked them for dinner. I don’t think Lilly or I ate one bite that night.

We next had to do it ourselves. It didn't take us long to become good little rabbit skinners. We even learned that if we were careful we could preserve their lungs and blow them up and play with them for a while before they dried up and stopped working. Whenever I tell people that, they look at me like I’m crazy. Maybe I am. We learned to smile and try to have fun in a lot of unpleasant situations. This was definitely one of the times that Lilly and I bonded.

Donna

Family Reunion July 12,2014

Aunt Jelene ,Aunt Helen, Brad, Me, Rowdy, Rex the dog and Jaxx the dog spent the week at the ranch.

We decided it might be fun to go up and get the ranch house cleaned up and ready for the reunion.
Mother has been gone 2 1/2 years. The ranch house, yard and goats miss her care. The field was dry and looked dead, all the plants around the ranch house were dry and sad looking. The goats ran away because there is no one to talk to them and feed them treats. The fly's were ABSOLUTELY atrocious. There were 3 goats that still hang around and they have the run of the yard, therefor there is fresh goat poop everywhere and the fly's were mating and spreading like fly's do. We watered the grass by the house and by the end of the week it was green again.
We walked in the ranch house and there was a TERRIBLE stench of death.  There were a few dead mice lying around but the smell didn't go away when they were disposed of.  We looked out J's old bedroom window and saw a dead baby goat. With flashlights and shovel in hand, Brad and I went to remove it hoping that that would solve the terrible smell.  Not so.  The baby goat was all dried out and had no more smell. Brad and I slept in that room.  We sprayed essential oils all over hoping to make it bare able to sleep. It helped. When the sun went down, the smell was a little less.
Thank goodness Brad was kind enough to come with us.  We put his skills right to work.  He turned the water on to the house, He fixed the kitchen sink so it would drain, he fixed door handles, he fixed the stove so we could cook. We were told before hand that the toilet wasn't working.  Brad bought a new toilet.  That was the first order of business to fix the toilet. It was scary.  It had old crap in it. Who knows how long it had sat in there.  I helped Brad take out the old toilet and replace it with a brand new one. It was Soooo nice to have a new toilet to use.
Jelene and Helen, cleaned out the back porch. There was goat poop that had to be shoveled out then scraped off the floor. If there were bags that mice could get into they did.  There was mice poop everywhere. They threw away a lot of Moms herbs in bags because the mice had been over everything. There were still cupboards and boxes with things that father kept in the back porch.  It all got moved out in the shed.  It looked so nice and clean when they got done.  Rowdy helped haul trash to the dump on the 4 wheeler.  We were all so hot and sweaty everyday. The pig cooker is still in tacked so we filled it with water and built a fire. It felt so go to bath in it and get clean.


to be continued

Strong Will

It didn't pay to be Red in our family.

I'm not talking about the color of your hair.  I'm talking about your personality type.
 

Red Leader/Promoter Power wielders. The ability to move from point A to point B. Getting things done is what motivates and drives these people.   They bring great gifts and vision and leadership and generally are responsible, decisive, proactive and assertive.

Seek productivity

Want their own way

Workaholics

Like to be right

Want respect more than Love

Resist being forced to do something

Confident

Visionaries

Proactive

"Winning isn't everything...It's the only thing!"

There were more than just one Red in our family. The one closet to my age was my sweet sister Ruth. When I came to her with a problem she would figure it out and fix it. She new how to get things done.
 

Those first years at the ranch were hard on us all.

Jelene hurried and got married just so she could get out of there. Then Kay got married and left. The brothers were off working to pay for the ranch. Father was, God only knows where.  It left Mother 47,Janice, Helen 13, Ruth 10, Beth 9, me 7 and Donna 2, to run the ranch. There was a lot to do. Helen and Ruth milked the cows, Beth fed the horses and cows, Janice fed the pigs and did the 
washing, I fed the chickens, geese, and rabbits. Donna was learning to go potty.

After our chores and breakfast, Mother home schooled us. Recess was jumping roap with my best friends, my sisters, my only friends. After school work was done, it was time to hoe in the garden.  If you wanted to eat you had to work. Dinners were simple like baked squash, split pea soup, baked potatoes. Mother made cheese and butter from our cows milk. We always had home made bread. Bread became our happy food. Hot out of the oven with butter and honey. We could eat a whole loaf. We lived simple and we ate simple.

Father would come home. The quiet and peace turned into stress and fear.

We were instantly his worker bees. I tried hiding several times. I could get diarrhea the moment I saw his car coming up the road. That got me out of a lot of things.
 It never failed that something happen while he was away.  After dinner he would line us all up and ask who did it. If no one fessed up, he would start spanking us with what ever was handy.  His belt, or his boot or a board or a twig.  Then he would tell us to be quiet. If we didn't stop to his satisfaction he would hold our breath with his hand.  Helen Beth and I must have been pretty good at sucking in our sobs, but Ruth was not, or she mouth off at him.  He would grab her, put her body between his legs with one hand on the back of her head and the other hand over her mouth and face and hold her breath until we though he would kill her right before our eyes.  He would let go long enough to give her a short breath of air and then do it again.  She would finally give up the fight. This happened many times.  Ruth was very strong willed. She was a fighter. Father didn't like children that stood up to him.  We were to be seen and not heard. He had to make sure that we new he had control. Ruth pushed his buttons.  He had to break her so she new who was in charge. Who was boss. Who had the power.

We were always so glad when he would leave.
Lilly

Gatherings at the Ranch.-updated

There were a few years in a row that we would have parties at the ranch. One year it was around Halloween because I remember dressing up like a pumpkin, and being so excited to see what my friends came as. This is also the year that my sisters gave me a home perm, so it was like a pumpkin on top of a pumpkin. What was I thinking? I also remember my sisters setting up an elaborate scheme to scare people as they drove through a narrow canyon dressed as characters from Sleepy Hollow. I think it was Beth that rigged her costume so that she actually looked like a headless horseman. If you knew any of the people that were coming,  you knew that some would be early, but most would be unpredictable as to their arrival time, so they sat down there in the narrows on their horses for probably hours in order to give our company a quick thrill by being chased by a headless horseman. Amazing what we had time for without TV.

There were probably 3-4 families that would be invited for various reasons. Father enjoyed having the men out so that someone would listen to him talk about his idea of religion for hours on end. Goodness knows we weren't very good listeners. Helen was feisty and unafraid to have a difference in opinion. Maybe that was a second reason to have these parties - find a man spirited enough to marry Helen. I wish I could have shared in some of her confidence.  

We anticipated these parties so much because it wasn't very often that we had company. Company meant
an escape from our boring lives of chores and home school. It meant good food, which to us was pretty much anything outside of squash, bread and potatoes.  At meal time there would be a whole table full of delicious salads, casseroles, white bread sandwiches, cookies and cakes. This to most people would have been ordinary, but to us ranch kids that only ate what was grown in our garden, it looked like a feast.

At night we would build a big bonfire and socialize and roast marshmallows to our hearts content. Until Mother said, "Now that's enough, you are going to get sick on all that sugar." And of course she was right because later we didn't feel all that great.

These gatherings also meant re-kindling friendships with people besides our sisters, which was exciting for all of us. Helen got to play hard to get for Merlin. He found out later that she wasn't playing. Haha. Ruth got to look beautiful for Dean and a few other beaus. Beth seemed uninterested in any of these Boys although, I'm sure that there were several that were on the prowl. For Lilly it meant lots of flirting with boys that she had no intention of marrying. I remember being mad at her because both of the Ward boys liked her and I thought one of them should have liked me. After all I had that wild curly red hair, poky 10 year old boobs and a big honk'n cold sore on my lip. What's not to like. After all I was probably worried about there being a shortage of men. We only saw a limited amount of them and not very often. 

I do think that I thought I would end up marrying into one of these families because at the time they were the only people from the outside world that came to see us and didn't think we were freaks. It wasn't until we moved to Las Vegas that I realized just how many people were in the world and that they weren't all crazy and that I wasn't really a freak after all.

I can't imagine having a different childhood. There was something to be said for the simplicity of living at the ranch. I really try to teach my kids how to enjoy the quiet afternoons by reading a book or just taking a walk out in the woods and enjoying the peace of nature. In the end I can only lead by example, but I constantly point out to them the wonders of nature and the beauty that God gives us to enjoy, because that is what my Mother did for me.

Donna

Sisters Week

Dear Sisters,
     One of my assignments for the writing class I am taking is to write 2 times on our blog before my next lesson. I was going over the notes I wrote while at the ranch last week for Sisters Week and thought I would write about a few things that we did, especially for Our Sweet Donna, who could not be there with us.
     The first weekend we spent time with Uncle Bart,  Cathrine and Ben and their families. Valeria, Ben's wife, taught the little girls how to make ribbon head bands. She had boxes of yarn and ribbon spend out around her on the ground under the shade of the awning of her trailer. She and Catherine and the girls sat there for hours making beautiful headbands, with ribbon streamer, some even had flowers. The girls were so excited.
     The Children had so much fun feeding, holding and loving the baby goats. There were new ones born everyday. We stood just off the back porch and watched Mother Nature bring two sets of twins into the world.  Of course there were two or three babies who couldn't get attached to their mommy's, so Ruth started teaching the children how to feed them with a bottle. Uncle Lee warned her that if she started feeding them, she would have to take them home with her.
     Saturday night, we had hamburgers and hotdogs and some yummy salads.  When it got dark we built a fire out by Brad and Lilly's camper and they brought out their radio and turned the wild music up loud. (Mother would not have approved!)  Lilly did a strip-tease for us. (Mother would not have approved!) Even Janice was shaking her stuff.  In the morning, she said that the dancing made her feel better.
     Monday morning, we set up the quilt, passed everyone a notebook and started telling stories. We did some timed writing, giving everyone a beginning sentence and then timing them for fifteen minutes.   The first one was, " The first time I saw Penny......"and then they would each write about Penny and father and mother and the time she drove the car off the road, because she was so mad at father.  We got quite a few stories written this way. And we quilted some more and only gossiped a little. We finished the quilt on Wednesday and wished it had lasted a little longer, it was so fun.
     On Wednesday, I decided I was tired of the boxes of food stacked in front of mothers china chest, so we brought in a wheel barrel and started chucking everything out of the pantry. The only thing we saved were some big plastic containers of Spices. We moved everything that was related to baking over to the baking cupboard by the door. We cleaned and painted the pantry and the next morning moved all of the food we brought into the new clean pantry. Wow!! That looked good. The girls kept commenting on their total Surprise! that Jelene had so much energy and was in a cleaning frenzy.... I said. "Well, since I have a maid at home, I guess I've been storing up cleaning minutes and didn't even realize it."
     We only had one real good fight with Janice the whole week. Helen informed her that we were going to go through the upstairs sheet and blanket shelves and she told Helen that the second shelf was hers and not to touch it. And Helen kindly said, "Yes, we will go through the second shelf too."  Janice got mad and would not back down.  We could hear her upstairs later, moving everything from the second shelf into her room.
    Thursday I made it up to the middle bedroom to clean off the shelves that held some of Mother's school papers. I wanted to go through them, to see if there was anything we might need for our book. I found twelve large manila envelopes stuffed with decorations for each month of the year. Each envelope had a month written across the top , January, Snowflakes, February, Valentines and so on down the year. They each held pictures and cut outs from coloring books and magazines,  to be copied or traced, then colored and glittered and cut out to hang in the window and on the door, to bring each season around in it's proper turn.
     The second shelf was devoted to Cheerios boxes that were cut up and saved, just in case Mother needed to send pictures between two pieces of cardboard to protect them. This shelf also held every eight by ten manilla envelope anyone had ever sent her, to be reused again, with a new label taped over the old one. (I have a bunch of those in my cupboard, as we speak!)
     On the bottom shelf I found two rolls of butcher paper rolled up with two big elastics holding it tight. Unrolling them, I found the words to all the songs we sang at Christmas and Thanksgiving, when we all gathered at the ranch in years past. Mother had them all printed out in her neat handwriting, so the grandchildren could read and sing along with us as we sang our favorite holiday songs.  As I looked at the words, I could here the clear sounds of us singing, "Ding, Dong, Ding, Fa, La La La La La... all of us gathered around mother at the piano.
    I rolled the songs back up and fastened the elastics to the ends, and placed the rolls back on the top shelf. Beautiful memories. Beautiful Mother.
    My sweet sister Kay, loves to talk before she goes to sleep. So, as we lay in Mother's bed each night, we talked about the things that happened that day. Then when she was ready to go to sleep, she would say, "Goodnight, sis." And I would say, "Night, Love." One night as I was falling a sleep I realized that I have shared a bed with her more than anyone else beside my husband.  She was always a nice bed partner.  We were sharing a bed the night Mother woke us to watch Lilly make her grand entrance into the world. And now every time we go to the ranch we get to share Mother's bed. Because we are the oldest. We're old now. We deserve the best bed. We're old. And I am the bossiest. And I'm old.
     Mother's bed is soft. You just kind of sink into it and let out a big sigh and relax and sleep. As I lay there I wondered how many nights she wept in this bed for her children, the way I have in mine. As we grew older and told her of the sad times we had as children, things she didn't even know were going on in our little lives, did she weep for us, and wish she could have protected us from all the bad in the world? I'm sure she did.  Did we make her sad by some of the things we said? I'm sure we did. Watching her great big family grow brought her joy and pain. It's called Life.  And She Marched On! Mother was a wonderful woman. She taught us to march on too. 
      Loves and Kisses, Jelene
    

    

News Flash

"Amazing Things Happening in Lexington KY"
Troy hasn't had any restless leg syndrome in the two weeks that I have been religiously rubbing oregano essential oils on his feet each night. If I forget and say goodnight, he will get this sad look on his face and say, "Aren't you going to rub my feet first?"  Then, even though I wash my hands afterwards, I can still smell Oregano in the morning when I wake.

Thank you Lilly for sending me what I need to help Troy. You are so sweet to me.

Love you all,
Donna